#safehand

Alright, so in The Stormlight Archives a woman is supposed to cover her left hand at all times, and not doing so is considered obscene. The website is a shitpost, basically.

My problem with it is that while it has actual photos of the actual left hands of women, the photos themselves are not really in on the joke.

The joke, or maybe "joke", is that anything taboo and forbidden becomes alluring in its own way, and there's some minor textual evidence that this actually is the case in the books (and it's certainly the vibe). If men aren't allowed to see the safehand, then a woman showing the safehand is an act of intimacy, trust, and acceptance, or if not that, then an implication-laden transgression.

And there are, in my opinion, certain ways that you would shoot a photo if this were the cultural meaning.

Here's one of the things that I think you'd do: in many cases you would not actually show the safehand. You would instead show a woman whose safehand is obviously uncovered, but with the safehand obscured from view. This would be "tasteful" safehand pornography. You would see things like the uncovered safehand underwater, refraction and ripples obscuring it. You'd see the safehand through gauzy fabric that hides nothing. You'd see whatever their version of latex is, temporarily vacuum sealing the safehand so you can see the curve of every knuckle. You'd see coverings in the act of being removed, but before actual removal has happened. The glove is sliding off, showing a little bit of wrist. Or maybe a woman is looking at you, teeth closed around the leather of the glove as she's pulling her hand from it. This is hinting at and flirting with taboo, not actually being so crass as to show it.

And if you are showing it, you don't just show it. In this world, the bare safehand is not a neutral fact! There are certainly all kinds of poses to show it off, to present it, and when I say poses I mean both how the woman is standing, what she's doing, and what position the hand is in. My sense is that dynamism would be more popular, given that the safehand is (at least for the upper class) not supposed to be used for much, so the more taboo-breaking thing would be to see it being used a lot. But the default reason that the safehand taboo is alluring is intimacy, so it depends on the visual language of intimacy. So maybe a candid photo of a relaxed hand with the backdrop of the side of her hip. Fingers running through hair, maybe. And obviously double-dipping in eroticism with the fingers of a safehand being run along lips or whatever.

For the sake of this post, I am avoiding the more explicitly sexual stuff, but I assume that would all be there too. That's technically breaking two taboos at once, and I think "there would be handjobs" is just less silly/funny to me. And I assume there are people out there in the real world with a hand fetish, and that they already have their own sites with their own tropes and norms. Hands don't do it for me, I'm normal about hands.

-The Way of Kings, chapter 48.

Because of the Vorin safehand-freehand thing, brightladies sometimes need to use their knees to open jars.